Nov. 15, 2018
07:38 am JST

Nov. 15, 2018
07:43 am JST

I have a Philippine friend who qualified for this scheme/scam. She is a qualified nurse and had studied Japanese for two years to achieve JLPT2. She was accepted into he program and was offered base salary of ¥240,000 per month minus health insurance and pension premiums, which brought her net salary down to around ¥190,000. She was given a 40 hour per week contract, which was on a four shift rotating roster. However, she was ordered to be at the care facility one hour before her shift started and to stay for hour after her shift finished to clean up and set up medical equipment. Furthermore, the only work she was given was bed pans, adult diapers and general cleaning duties. She lasted about five months before she became totally disgusted, quit and went back to the Philippines where she now works in a real hospital with a real salary.

This is opportunity to work in Japan is touted as a very attractive deal for young people from other Asian countries, but the reality is very different.

Nov. 15, 2018
08:23 am JST

If the "nursing care" is mainly or even significantly in the aged care sector, then Japan is going to face a lot of competition from other developed countries with ageing populations to get people to come in and do that kind of work.

Japan is going to have to offer more than those other countries, such as Australia - which is completely accepting of "foreign" professionals - if it wants to attract those workers.

Nov. 15, 2018
08:40 am JST

Politicians should have learnt by now, after all the failed incentive plans, that even the poorest of the people will need more than a mediocre income to leave their family behind. That is specially true for serious professionals trying to follow their dream carrier. A better pay, respect for their knowledge and skills and most of all embrace from the local community, those are the lowest bar to offer to get any good labor through the door. I know, I know that is not going to happen and I know that is not really what this law is all about; they only want numbers. No wonder they are temporary positions. Maybe they should just stop using "higher skills" in the debates.

Nov. 15, 2018
11:27 am JST

"Labor shortages in sectors such as nursing care, construction and food services in particular occur because of low wages and labor conditions, regardless of whether you are Japanese or foreign," he said. "It is necessary to implement other reforms such as increasing average wages within industries."

Exactly. We collectively have to recognize that physically demanding, hard/tedious/menial/boring jobs that nobody wants to do deserve higher pay than minimum wage (even if that means less $ for some of us)

Nov. 15, 2018
12:26 pm JST

Regarding Do the Hustle's story, the wages sound like standard for a care home. Low compared to the cost of living in Japan, but standard. Given that communication will be a huge part of the job, a non-native speaker being assigned many menial duties is also understandable. The problem is the unpaid overtime. Expecting anyone to work 25% more for nothing is exploitation. Unless this issue is dealt with, it is idiotic to expect in-demand skilled workers of any profession, be it medicine, programming, or whatever, to flock to Japan. It is also idiotic to expect Japan's latent workforce, mostly married women, to give up spousal dependency and work under the same conditions. The difference between eight hours and ten hours for someone with responsibility over child-raising is huge.

Nov. 15, 2018
01:09 pm JST

Nov. 15, 2018
01:51 pm JST

Because local youngsters don't want to do this type of job Hard work and messy

2. Imagine being a "foreigner" looking after ageing and cranky Japanese oldsters......

Exactly. Yet another thankless (regardless of how important it is) job in Japan. It's the state things end up in when a whole country takes on the shouganai and majime attitudes simultaneously. A system and society that doesn't reward or encourage passion or anything that comes from the heart. You now have generations of people who expect you to wipe their rears without even giving a thanks.

Add on to that the stigma around foreigners... and the messy job gets messier. I would hate to be that foreigner...

Nov. 15, 2018
02:16 pm JST

This domestic worker thing is wearing thin, I had one niece who turned down a job in Dubai as the salary was almost the same as in the Philippines. So why go? And when you work in Dubai, they have you classified by nationaltiy and your salary will be based on where you are from, so Indians have an indian-like salary and work seven days a week! But here, you can’t leave until your contract is up. In Japan, my Filipino relatives still have a lot of complaints about living here, isolation being one.

Nov. 15, 2018
03:36 pm JST

Japan's nursing care businesses are expected to accept up to 60,000 foreign workers over five years, the highest number among 14 industrial sectors facing labor shortages that will be subject to proposed changes of the immigration law, the government said Wednesday.

Just say it as workers no need to say it as on-the-job-training, just to get workers from abroad.

To be qualified to even take the exam, they are required to have at least three years of on-the-job-training in Japan, giving them effectively one shot to pass before they are asked to leave the county. Nurse candidates can take the national nursing exam from the first year.

Nov. 16, 2018
03:25 am JST

Nov. 16, 2018
06:10 am JST

I was hospitalised for 44 days in 2017, and would certainly prefer a foreigner over a robot, regardless of language used. One of my doctors was Chinese, all of my nurses, to my knowledge were Japanese - but some might have been foreign.

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